"You have got to be kidding me."
BASICS
NAME: Swan
GENDER: female
PRONOUNS: she/her/hers
ORIENTATION: demisexual
BIRTHDATE: Early Summer 2734
AGE: forty-three as of Fall 2777
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: wingrider
WING: Starfall
APPEARANCE
EYES: green
HAIR: blonde
HEIGHT AND BUILD: five feet and seven inches
PLAY-BY: Jennifer Morrison
FULL APPEARANCE: Swan is a solidly built woman, testimony not only to her now many Turns of riding, but the near-decade of candidacy that came before it. She has early wrinkles around the corners of her green eyes and callouses on her hands that oiling can't fully remove, signs of hard living. Most of her clothes are of somewhat medium quality, patched enough times to be on the shabbier side of worn. Her most outstanding feature, and probably the newest article of clothing in her wardrobe, is a red leather jacket that she commissioned shortly after graduating. It doesn't really matter how the weather chooses to behave, she is generally wearing her red leather jacket.
Aside from her colorful sartorial choice, Swan's other vanity is her long blonde hair. It never seems to stay tied back for any appreciable length of time, but that doesn't stop Swan's mother from shaping it into elaborate styles whenever she has a few hours with her daughter. That's one reason she hasn't cut it to a more helmet-appropriate length.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: For someone who lived through Golre's regime, Swan has no right to be as light and hopeful as she is. Things can always be better, but there is no situation that is hopeless enough to warrant despair. Swan chooses to see the bright side of life. This determined naivety makes it easy to trick her into doing extra chores if Yatagarath doesn't put a stop to it first.
Despite her well-developed fawn response, Swan is very anti-metallic. She never really got over the idea that it was the squabbling of dragon riders that led to her twenty-Turn separation from her parents. Nothing she has been through since Impressing has made her any more kindly disposed towards gold and bronze riders, and she will never vote for one in a position of power. That is partly because she claims to be above things like gossip, but she always has an ear open for it. She rarely perpetuates such things, but she tends to treat gossip as fact. Her predisposition against metallic riders means that she believes the bad things much more easily than anything good.
HISTORY
FAMILY: Birth mother - Margaent 'Snow', holder, Spring 2712
Birth father - Nolain 'Charming', holder, Winter 2709
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: none
BIRTHPLACE: Misthaven, a small cothold under the auspices of High Reaches
HISTORY:
Swan's parents have the kind of relationship the Harpers love to sing about. They met at a Gather. 'Met' is kind of a strong term, given how her father literally ran her mother down while riding recklessly. He was quickly given the derisive moniker 'Charming', as in 'aren't you charming', and Swan's mother became 'Snow', because 'you're as warm as winter snow'.
Their inauspicious beginnings aside, Snow and Charming ran into each other several times over the next few Turns, and fell in love. They kept their monikers, now cherished pet names, and had a child together. Swan was a wanted baby, beloved and cherished from the moment her mother knew she was pregnant. But war doesn't always allow for happy endings, and this particular family was torn apart by the squabbling of dragonriders.
Swan was raised in the creche of a somewhat smaller hold, never neglected or mistreated, but also not particularly loved. She was never tapped for a craft, and was resigned, if not excited, to spend her life as an average holder. That lasted until the dragon came on Search. Swan was one of three adolescents tapped that fateful day, and she came to High Reaches Weyr at the age of eighteen.
It was not a good environment. Everything was skewed towards the metallic dragons and their riders, from the distribution of the best supplies to how the candidates were taught. Male candidates were encouraged to be brutal, with an aim towards Impressing bronze. Female candidates like Swan were taught how to best attract the attention of a gold, but never how to be too independent. They still had to fit under Golre's thumb, after all. Swan never came close to Impressing, through violent clutches that left multiple candidates maimed. She would have made a poor scion of High Reaches, after all. At twenty-five, Swan aged out of candidacy.
Then Golre launched a final attack on Fort, ridding High Reaches of all metallic dragons forever and ever amen.
Oh, if only.
Fort Weyr was the one to send the most dragons to help rebuild the ruined High Reaches, and it was in that wave of transfers that Swan saw her first garnet. She didn't know then how garnets would tie into her future, though when the age limit was raised to include her again, she attended the first clutch as a dutiful candidate. It was a mixed clutch, with two eggs from a green weyrling who rose too early and three from a transferred garnet.
Beeath's first contribution to the gene pool at High Reaches turned out to be twin greens. They were both particularly striking, the first green hatchlings to touch the sands of High Reaches since the tyranny of Vizeth. One of them sparrow-hopped her way down the line of candidates, looking for someone in particular.
You! Yatagarath bounced happily for a moment as she locked rainbow eyes on Swan. Isn't this exciting? Aren't you excited? How are you so calm, I can't hold still!
The three green weyrlings from the Mixes group were the first weyrlings at High Reaches to be given the choice: chew firestone and be rendered infertile, or use a flamethrower like the golds, with a chance of clutching. Swan picked the chance to clutch, because she hated the idea of being beholden to a gold for the future.
Fate brought her parents together at a Gather, and perhaps it was only fitting that she should meet them again at a Gather. Swan struck up a conversation with an older woman at a stall selling bubbly pies, where both Swan and Margaent realized that they were talking about each other when they spoke of lost family members. Ever since, Margaent has delighted in spending time with her daughter. They bond while Margaent styles Swan's hair, and that quickly became a tradition. Nolain dotes on his adult daughter in all the ways that he missed when she was younger, and they have become friends.
Swan generally likes the direction High Reaches is going these days, but she will always be suspicious of bronze riders with ambitions high enough to be elected to the Council.
